Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

According to a Comscore/Facebook survey Starbucks reaches more non-fans than fans organically through posts on its page… Starbucks are being seen by double the amount of people who are fans every time a post is shared. The same survey also reported that exposure to a Starbucks post resulted in 38% of people increasing store purchases. Ultimately engagement delivers to the bottom line too.

During this I proposed that practitioners who deal with collecting, processing, analysing and sharing social media data can operate according to a simple principle, to weight privacy in favour of individuals, and transparency towards institutions. For indeed, such responsible data dealing is essential for attaining and retaining trust in 21st century institutions…

Delving further into what this means in practice I put forward the following framework, which can be used by marketers to clearly document and ask questions of social data usage:

You’ve done your research, you know what your audience like to read, watch, say online. You’re ready to take your brand presence to the next level online, you want to make it big on Facebook… to post, to listen, to learn, to really reach and engage with people. Trouble is, your prime prospects don’t want to talk about <insert products> all day long. They don’t want to muse on what colour theirs is, or what they did with it last week. They might think <insert products> are great… but they have no desire to go on about it, in any way, not even on your shiny, carefully constructed Facebook page.

So what’s needed is content your target people will talk about, and share.. that’s funny, or otherwise entertaining.. and whatever it is, ideally it needs to lead in some logical way back to your product. Even better, a rich content seam you can mine again and again. Sure it can be about ‘lifestyle’ – but if the product can be found in the message.. that’s when it’s working hardest.

A good example of this principle in action is Red Bull’s Facebook page posts – referring to ‘wings.’ The brand has cultivated a life on the edge image.. but importantly, for the day to day on Facebook, it references wings.. in all kinds of obscure ways, making its audience think back to the brand.. and the high octane fizzy concoctions it ultimately wants to sell.

‘Wings’ then, is a simple, effective ‘social object‘ that gives the brand lots of room to play. Which is what’s needed for inspiration when you are trying to engage one of the toughest, least patient, audiences online: young men.

Love the way Unilever are integrating sustainability communications into their Facebook page here – which currently has a healthy 697,000 likes. Within the dedicated ‘sustainable living’ tab on its app the brand asks people what they do and don’t want to hear about from its three sustainability pillars.

The thumbs down sign is almost, but not quite, a forbidden ‘dislike’ button. But in any case negative responses are not displayed – it seems only total thumbs ups are shown.

Participation numbers aren’t high – but that’s probably because it’s buried half way down a secondary tab on its main brands app (and not sure how long it’s been there). They also might want to consider integrating voting with some sort of incentive, e.g. a charity donation – like Petplan UK are doing at the moment on their Facebook app:

Durex USA are looking to make further in-roads into the US condom market with their new Facebook app which offers couples the chance to get “in sync,” by finding the perfect love song based on their lovemaking styles. As well as a creative means of gamifying individual characteristics in a way that ties neatly, but just about subtly, to the product, this is a good case study in dealing with user data, and Facebook sharing, clearly and sensitively. The Facebook app like gate / splash page clearly tells potential users “Don’t worry. We won’t share your results unless you tell us to.”

Unilever, in partnership with PSI and Facebook, hopes to harness the social graph to address one of the world’s most critical challenges: access to clean water… When [Facebook] users sign up to Waterworks, they partner with an individual waterworker, making the connection personal. The waterworker in the field is equipped with a smartphone, able to send updates back to partners through photos and videos. The updates post to the partner’s Facebook page, so all of their connections also see the impact the donation is making- how many liters of water the donation has provided and the number of people whose lives have been changed by the clean water.